Thanks Tony - I love Tyndale. He described Adam and Eve as wearing ‘aprons’ of fig leaves. Nice touch.

Is it possible that you posit a false dichotomy when it comes to the word ‘ekklesia’ and its use as a technical ‘religious’ word? ‘Ordinary’ words (if there are such things) change with use in new contexts after all, and the NT was written by and too people who had evidently been using the word to identify themselves for a number of years.

Does persisting with the word ‘congregation’ obscure this development?

@Tony - ‘congregation’ in Article XIX unfortunately refers to the national rather than the local church congregation - so I don’t know if Albert will buy it!

I am not not a fan of ‘congregation’. I am interested in how chosing this vocabulary sets up a doctrine of the ‘church’, though.

Indeed.
When else would the “congregation” congregate for these purposes if not in a local sense?
I was about to buy a purple shirt & dog collar but if it means something other than the literal sense then I’ll spend my money instead on a deeper baptismal

Tony, in a conversation I had with Donald Robinson 10 years or so back, he pointed out that in Article XIX

The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments are duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred: so also the Church of Rome has erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.

there is a comparison implied between the ‘Church’ (presumably of England, as that’s what the 39 Articles were written for) as a congregation, and the churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch and Rome. It could be argued that all 4 churches of J, A, A, and R were national churches, or even in the case of Rome, trans-national.

On balance of probability, giving due weight to the historical context of the 16th century, Donald Robinson’s argument was that ‘congregation’ was being used of the national church in this article.

That is my recollection of his argument. It seems possible, even probable, but not decisive.

Baptistery?

Sorry Michael. Just realised I didn’t acknowledge your second and more significant point—viz how ‘congregation’ as a translation ‘sets up a doctrine of church’.

I obviously wasn’t getting that far in the post—just noticing how the different translation helped my reading.

But it is interesting to ponder how our doctrine of church might be differently expressed and conceptualised if it was a ‘doctrine of assembly’ or a ‘doctrine of congregation’. Might its focus and parameters be different?

TP

@Tony - yes, it might be. But I think the danger would be that it might be too reductive. The NT uses a great array of metaphors and terms to describe the ‘church/congregation’, including ‘the Way’, ‘the body’, the ‘people of God’, ‘house of God’ and so on. Why make this notion of ‘congregation’ the controlling one? There may be good reasons to do so, but if there are, it would be worth hearing them.

I was interested to read recently that Donald Robinson felt that he hadn’t really completed a full analysis of all the NT has to say about the church - he had just made a telling point about the usage of one of the terms.

@Michael

I don’t follow. You (rightly) say that the NT uses a range of metaphors to talk about the ‘church/congregation’—as if the two terms are equivalent enough to be forward-slashed together. But then you seem to be suggesting that ‘congregation’ is too reductive in a way that ‘church’ is not.

So what is the overplus that ‘church’ gives us over ‘congregation’ as a conceptual ‘controlling notion’? (I’m assuming you’re happy with ‘church’ as the over-arching doctrinal category because you originally asked how all this ‘set up our doctrine of church.)

TP

A few years ago it was the “gathering”. What’s made you shift to “congregation” Tony?

And don’t go off on your daughter either! There’s a huge amount of debate on coordinated pronouns. Check pages 8-10 of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (the best description of modern English) for just an introduction to the complexities: http://www.cambridge.org/assets/linguistics/cgel/chap1.pdf While it’s possible your daughter speaks a slightly different dialect of English to you I think it’s far more likely that you’re just not aware of how you really speak - and your editorial training has poisoned you against natural English I wonder if I could find examples where you broke your own rules in this Sola Panel corpus…

1. (e) of course being the most critical of factors to resolve ...

In following the conversation though… surely the question of what is the best translation of the word differs from the theological (& secondary polity) implications.

In which case, though it is as hard for to cast my baptist bias aside as it is for you your episcopalian, I find it difficult not to prefer Tyndale’s original choice. Given that (in my simplistic or reductionistic understanding of the history of the KJV) the choice of “Church” over “congregation” was politically and theologically (not necessarily in that order) driven.

Surely in terms of hermeneutics, there is a distinction between what IS the word and what does the word MEAN?
Was Tyndale trying to be literal and use the ploughman’s language or was he stirring the theological pot a bit? Or perhaps, more than likely, a combination of the two?

If his interest was soley that the ploughboy have a grasp of scripture then why didn’t he translate ‘baptizo’ as “dip” or “dunk” or (to placate our SAngy & Presby mates) “wash”?

There’s a talk by Don Carson available from the Yorkshire Gospel Partnership which touches on these issues available here.

I’d also suggest that “congregation” is not entirely neutral — the dictionary I have at hand lists the primary meaning as a gathering for religious worship. Yet perhaps, in light of the background to εκκλησια in the LXX, that counts in its favour over more neutral terms such as “gathering.”

Thanks Lionel - although I think it was quite clear to Cranmer that a ‘congregation’ could be a national church (as it was indeed in the OT - where you see the word ekklesia frequently refer to the assembly of Israel, or even to the gathering of their elders Ps 106:32)

Yes, got me there - I was distracted by the word ‘assembly’ in several English translations to translate the word ‘kathedra’ or ‘seat’.

You are absolutely right, I think, on the point you are making - that the church as Cranmer wanted to define was established by word and sacrament (and he was sounding a lot like Calvin at this point). It wasn’t the institution that mattered.

I think it’s misleading to refer to the church in the OT as “national” in
the same sense as the English church is “national”.

Yes, surely as misleading as a misleading thing that has been led astray and gone for a beach holiday at the Black Hole of Calcutta before falling into a pit.

The assembly at Mt Sinai included literally every body, men, women, children, firstborn, lastborn, even sheepdogs and cattle (if I am reading Exodus 19:13. We are not talking some cosy Cranmerian English village chapel, as Cranmer himself possibly realized when he spoke of the ‘congregation of faithful men’.

@Michael, thanks. Here’s a further exegetical thought, perhaps somewhat along the lines you were advocating: there is one very significant verse which extends the meaning of ekklesia beyond a simple concept of “gathering”. 1 Tim 3:15 identifies “church/congregation” with “household”! Knox-Robinson never included this verse in their discussions, as far as I can tell.

@Sandy, you’re asking too much of me. It’s only 1.25 pence worth at current exchange rates.

Acts 9:31 in the ESV reads: “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up” - which seems to indicate a use of the term ekklesia as a non-congregated plurality of congregations.

There is a textual variant, which means the older English versions (like the KJV) translated the word ‘churches’.

@Michael, I agree that Acts 9:31 might be significant, but I think the reference in 1 Timothy is more significant. The reason I don’t normally head straight to Acts 9:31 is Peter O’Brien’s comment:

In one or two New Testament instances ekklēsia is found as an extension of the literal, descriptive use of “an assembly” to designate the persons who compose that gathering whether they are assembled or not. This is a natural extension or linguistic development of group words (note our use of the word “team”) and may explain references such as Acts 8:3; 9:31; 20:17. However, two significant observations need to be made: first the primary use of the word ekklēsia as ‘gathering’, ‘assembly’ predominates overwhelmingly in the New Testament—and indeed through the Apostolic Fathers to the Apologists. Secondly, no theological constructs are made on the basis of these very few extended uses.

From Peter T. O’Brien, ‘The Church as a Heavenly and Eschatological Entity’, in The Church in the Bible and the World (ed. D. A. Carson; Exeter: Paternoster, 1987), 92.

However, I think that a very significant theological construct is made throughout 1 Timothy, and that this construct is caught up with the equation of the church with the household (or “family”) in 1 Tim 3:15. I don’t think 1 Tim 3:15 is subject to O’Brien’s observations in the same way that the Acts references are.

A very good book on the terms used in KJV English and how that has affected the English Reformation is Alister McGrath’s book, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture

I happen to agree that the best translation of ekklesia is “assembly” or “congregation”.  The idea of “church” is ambiguous as the late Broughton Knox pointed out.

As to the point of “national” churches, the geographical locations of the churches in error are generally in one specific location, not multi-national.

Although it should be conceded that Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria would include many congregations assembling together in those metropolitan areas.

This brings up the biblical evidence for all three forms of church polity.  There is evidence for congregational polity, presbyterian polity, and episcopal polity—which is why fellowship with Evangelical denominations of other traditions should not be hard and fast.  That would mean that “valid orders” rest solely in whether or not the minister is properly ordained in his own denomination and whether or not he and his particular denomination “rightly preaches the Gospel and duly ministers the sacraments.” 

The so-called historic episcopate is unbiblical.

The Declaration of Principles of the original Reformed Episcopal Church here in the USA clearly defined those issues, although it is ironic that that denomination has now gone over to the Anglo-Catholics.

See:  Declaration of Principles

# 
# This Church condemns and rejects the following erroneous and strange doctrines as contrary to God’s Word:

    First, that the Church of Christ exists only in one order or form of ecclesiastical polity:
    Second, that Christian Ministers are “priests” in another sense than that in which all believers are a “royal priesthood:”
    Third, that the Lord’s Table is an altar on which the oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ is offered anew to the Father:
    Fourth, that the Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is a presence in the elements of Bread and Wine:
    Fifth, that regeneration is inseparably connected with Baptism.